A Serbian truck driver crosses a road at the Batrovci border crossing between Serbia and Croatia on Jan. 26, 2026.
Hundreds of truck drivers continued blocking freight border crossings across several Balkan countries for a third day on Wednesday, protesting EU rules limiting their time in the bloc.
Dozens of goods checkpoints in Bosnia, Montenegro and North Macedonia have been blocked as part of a coordinated effort by trucking unions, while Serbian truckers have shut both Schengen entry and exit points, with lines of trucks seen near the crossings.
At Bajakovo, Croatia's main crossing with Serbia, there was a queue of around two kilometres (1.2 miles) of trucks waiting to leave the EU's Schengen area on Wednesday morning, border police told AFP.
"Western Balkan economies are losing around 100 million euros ($119 million) a day in goods exports," Serbian Chamber of Commerce (CCIS) president Marko Cadez said late Tuesday, blaming EU bureaucracy and an inadequate response.
One of the protest organisers, Nedjo Mandic from the Association of Transport Operators of Serbia, told AFP they "do not want drivers standing idle" but "have no moral right to force them to go somewhere where they could be arrested".
According to CCIS, nine drivers from Serbia have been detained in Germany over the past week for breaching the rule limiting stays in the EU to 90 days within a 180-day period.
Since October, the EU has begun rolling out its long-delayed Entry/Exit System (EES) at borders across the 27-nation bloc, aimed at ending the use of passport stamps and digitising visitor registration.
Although the limit on stays in the EU is not new, the electronic EES system will mean more rigorous enforcement for non-EU citizens.
Mandic said the condition for ending the blockades was a call for talks and at least "a guarantee that there will be no arrests".
But for now, he added, "there is no special news from Brussels".
A European Commission spokesperson told AFP on Monday they were "aware of concerns raised by Western Balkan transport operators" and were "following the situation closely".
According to EU data, the bloc is the Western Balkans' leading trade partner, accounting for more than 60 percent of the region's total trade, most of which is transported by road.
Trade in goods between the EU and the Western Balkans totalled over 83 billion euros ($98 billion) in 2024.
